


A Protest to Save

by kjack89



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Police Custody, Protests, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When disaster strikes right before Les Amis' first protest, Enjolras doubts himself and Grantaire finds a way to make him believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Protest to Save

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by a scene from the fantastic (1979) film The Muppet Movie, with many liberties taken.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

They were as prepared for that night as they would have been for finals, each bringing a thermos full of coffee (save for Grantaire, who brought a thermos full of wine), as well as all the supplies they needed to finish their protest signs, and perhaps most importantly, the determination and enthusiasm of either the very confident or very naïve.

It was the first protest planned by Les Amis, the activist group founded (and unofficially led) by Enjolras, who had also spearheaded this protest. When the university forbid them from holding it on campus, as had been their initial plan, Enjolras was the one who went to City Hall to get the necessary permit to hold the event downtown instead. And as the night dragged on into the early hours of the morning in the backroom of the Musain, their usual meeting place, Enjolras was the one who stayed stubbornly focused while some of the others, dedicated to the Cause though they absolutely were, became a little slaphappy.

A few bottles of alcohol were brought out and suddenly Grantaire wasn’t the only one drinking while they worked (though to be fair at least everyone else was working; Grantaire seemed content to pretty much just drink), and even then the work started to grind to a halt as productivity levels fell and joking and general horseplay increased.

Enjolrwas was just about to call for a break when the worst possible thing disrupted them far more than slaphappiness and alcohol could: the police arrived.

“We’ve had a complaint about the noise level from this establishment,” the lead officer told them, in a way that said he didn’t really care if they were doing anything illegal or not — he just wanted to throw his weight around. “Not to mention it looks like you’re planning for something illegal.”

“Protesting is hardly illegal,” Enjolras said hotly, his temper getting the best of him. “Especially since we have a permit.”

The police officer looked unimpressed as he said slowly, “And we’re not here about a permit for a rinky-dink protest. In addition to the noise complaint, we’ve had reports of underaged drinking.” He looked around at the room, especially at those who looked particularly guilty (Joly had never had a great poker face, and Bossuet, though 21, had taken that unfortunate moment to hand the open bottle of vodka to Jehan, who decidedly was not 21). “And given the attitude that you’ve given us, I think it’s only fair that we bring all of you in to get this cleared up.”

Bahorel cracked his neck and stood up to his full — and quite impressive — height. “On what charges?” he asked, more mildly curious than anything.

The office gave him a once-over, his lip curling. “Possession of alcohol by a minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, resisting arrest…” He leaned in closer before adding, “And just because I don’t like you or your attitude, and that’s enough for me to hold you for twenty-four hours, even without charging you.”

“You can’t do that!” Enjolras protested, which was clearly the wrong thing to say, since the officer gestured at his companions, who stepped forward.

“Yeah. We can. And we will.” The officer grabbed Enjolras’s arm, twisting it behind his back, and told him in his ear, “Inspector Javert sends his regards.”

His comment was enough to tell Enjolras what this was  _really_  about — Inspector Javert, the police liaison to the mayor’s office, where Enjolras had gone to get the permit for their protest, had been vehemently against issuing it, and had only issued the permit when Enjolras had gone over his head to Major Valjean himself. And clearly, this was his way of punishing Enjolras — and by extension, punishing the rest of Les Amis, and their cause, since they could hardly lead their protest tomorrow if they were being held in jail.

That thought felt worse than anything, and he was silent all the way to the police station, an unfamiliar feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t until they got to the police station, it wasn’t until they were divided into pairs and put into holding cells, it wasn’t until the bars of the holding cell clanged behind him that Enjolras realized what the feeling was: guilt. Guilt and a whopping helping of utter, soul-crushing defeat.

He felt almost like crying, like curling into a ball and crying until he couldn’t feel anything, but of course he didn’t, leaning instead against the bars and trying to ignore Grantaire, who had been assigned to the same cell as him and who had currently plopped down on one of the benches with a resigned expression on his face, as if he had expected the night to go no other way. “Well done, Apollo,” Grantaire drawled, closing his eyes and tipping his head back to rest it against the cell wall.

Enjolras clenched his jaw. “This  _isn’t_  my fault,” he snapped, even though, really, it was.

Grantaire opened one eye and smirked. “Of course it isn’t. But still. You’re the figurehead of this whole nonsense, aren’t you? The blame has to fall on someone, after all.” He shrugged and closed his eye again. “Makes no difference to me. Just a shame that the protest isn’t going to go on tomorrow when everyone worked so hard on it.”

“Everyone but you,” Enjolras shot back, though the words seemed hollow.

Now Grantaire didn’t even bother opening his eyes, though his smirk widened. “Everyone but me,” he agreed.

Enjolras just shook his head, though his heart seemed to sink, and he sat down on the bench opposite Grantaire’s. “I never promised anyone anything,” he said quietly, his tone stubborn but lacking in any real conviction. “What do I know about changing the world anyway? Just the dreams I got from thinking I could make a difference.”

Frowning, Grantaire sat up slightly, his brow furrowed as he opened both eyes this time to stare across the cell at Enjolras, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “So then why’d you try this whole protest thing anyway?”

“Because someone has to,” Enjolras said softly, leaning against the wall, his posture unconsciously mimicking Grantaire’s. “And I guess I just thought…maybe I could do something good in this world…But I guess I was wrong. The only I did was get all of my friends locked up in jail. Like a complete and utter failure.”

His voice was quiet, defeated, and Grantaire’s brow furrowed even further, as if he couldn’t quite believe that these words were coming out of Enjolras’s mouth. “But if you didn’t try something, if you didn’t  _do_  something, you know damn well you’d be feeling like even more of a failure than you do right now, at home in mommy and daddy’s McMansion.”

Enjolras shrugged. “Yeah, but then it would just be me feeling miserable. Now, I’ve got everyone else locked up for something that shouldn’t be any of their faults. Because it’s  _my_  fault.” There was a hard, almost brittle quality to his voice as he said, more to himself than to Grantaire, “I didn’t promise them anything, but I  _did_  fail them.”

For a long moment, Grantaire was silent, obviously mulling over what Enjolras had said, and developing his own response. Their barbed back-and-forths were renowned among Les Amis, but this was different — Grantaire would have been quick with a sardonic comeback, and the time he was taking showed that he was going to say something different. “Don’t dismiss the choices that our friends made,” he said slowly, lifting his eyes to meet Enjolras’s gaze. “Whether you promised them anything or not, you have to remember that they wanted to follow you, to be here.”

“Yeah, because they believed in me.”

Grantaire leaned forward, an odd half-smile on his face. “No. With one exception, it was because they believe in the same thing you do — that change is needed, and that this is somehow going to accomplish it. They believe in the dream. Just like you do.”

Enjolras shook his head slowly. “Do I, though?”

“I don’t know,” Grantaire shot back, his words a clear challenge. “Do you?”

Enjolras met his gaze, and for a long moment, they just looked at each other from across the holding cell. Then Enjolras laughed, a brief, dry laugh, but enough to actually bring a small smile to his face. “I guess I was wrong when I said I never promised anyone anything.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I promised me.”

Grantaire couldn’t stop the smile that flashed across his own face, something like triumph in his expression before it smoothed into something more neutral. “And are you going to break that promise?”

Though Enjolras looked more determined than he had since they arrived at the police station, he still hesitated, and his expression fell just slightly. “Well, there’s not a whole lot that I can do—” he hedged, but was interrupted by Bahorel, of all people, popping up in front of the bars of their cell and grinning wildly at them both.

“If you two are done with your heart to heart, we’ve got hell to raise.”

Both Enjolras and Grantaire stood, Enjolras looking surprised, Grantaire grinning. “What’s going on?” Enjolras asked urgently.

Combeferre arrived next to Bahorel, clapping him on the shoulder and grinning at Enjolras and Grantaire as an officer came over to unlock their cell. “You’ll never guess who showed up to bail us out of here — Pontmercy.”

“Marius?” Enjolras said, surprised, while Grantaire practically cackled as he told Bahorel, “Courfeyrac is going to owe that kid so many blowjobs.”

Bahorel cracked up and even Combeferre couldn’t help but snort, even as Courfeyrac joined them and asked, only mildly curious, “Who do I owe blowjobs to this time?”

Enjolras’s mind, however, was far away, his expression becoming almost fierce as he went over the last-minute plans they still needed to do for the protest to go off tomorrow. “Come on,” he said firmly, snapping them all back to reality. “We’ve got a protest to save. Courfeyrac can worry about doling out blowjobs later.”

They joined up with Feuilly, Prouvaire, Joly, and Bossuet, all going as a group out to the lobby to meet up with Pontmercy, who brushed off their thanks by noting that the police really  _didn’t_  have any right to hold them, and he had just been the one to point it out (“I knew I was right to keep him in law school,” Bossuet said, beaming) and together they headed back to the Musain. Courfeyrac trailed at the back of the group as they headed out, repeating loudly, “Who am I giving a blowjob to?”

One of the officers choked on his coffee as they passed and Courfeyrac winked at him. “Some other time, Officer. I’ll undoubtedly be back.”

“Please don’t get us rearrested for soliciting a police officer,” Feuilly sighed, though he was grinning.

Courfeyrac just laughed and threw an arm around Feuilly’s shoulder. “It’s not solicitation if I’m offering for free.” At the head of the group, Enjolras swiveled around to glare at him, clearly unimpressed, and Courfeyrac cleared his throat. “But anyway, first we raise hell, then we worry about blowjobs.”

“Words I never thought I’d hear you say,” Bossuet said cheerfully. They all laughed, but Enjolras wasn’t smiling, his expression nothing but determined as they headed to the Musain and to the dream he had almost given up on.

* * *

 

It was perhaps unsurprising that after everything, the protest went off without a hitch. The crowd wasn’t perhaps as large as some of the protests Enjolras had been to in high school and even at university leading up to this, but considering it was a weekday and considering that they hadn’t quite been able to do all their preparations because of their stint at the police station, he was quite proud nonetheless.

So much so that when they went to the Musain to celebrate their success, he allowed Courfeyrac to press a drink with indeterminate ingredients into his hand. It would be easy for him to blame that drink for why he went to find Grantaire, but truthfully, something Grantaire had said while they were at the police station had niggled in the back of his mind since.

He joined Grantaire at the bar, sitting in the bar stool next to where Grantaire was leaning, clearly waiting for a drink, and Grantaire glanced over at him, doing a rather comical double-take when he saw it was Enjolras who had joined him. “Well as I live and breathe,” Grantaire said in a fake southern accent, propping his chin up on his hand and batting his eyelashes at Enjolras. “Look who has deigned to join me.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Hardy-har,” he said. “Look, I wanted to ask you about something.”

“Let me buy you a drink,” Grantaire said, as if Enjolras hadn’t spoken. “You deserve one after the success of the day. I mean, I assume you’re considering it a success, even though I consider you delusional. But seriously, what’s your poison? Because if you don’t tell me what you want to drink, I’ll get you something vile.”

Though Enjolras opened his mouth to tell Grantaire off, to tell him to be serious for a moment to let Enjolras get a word in edgewise (hell, to tell Grantaire that he was  _not_  delusional and that the protest had been a fantastic success), he surprised himself by saying, “Surprise me.”

Grantaire also looked surprised, and he blinked at Enjolras before leaning over the bar and calling to the bartender, “Sex on the beach!” At Enjolras’s exasperated look, he told him, “Trust me, you’ll like it a hell of a lot more than whatever Courfeyrac tried to get you to drink.”

When the drink arrived, Enjolras took a cautious sip, and was impressed. “It is good,” he admitted.

Grinning, Grantaire held up his own drink (“A perfect Rob Roy,” he had told Enjolras when asked what it was he was drinking) in a toast. “To contributing to the delinquency of minors.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes but nonetheless clinked his glass against Grantaire’s. “To a successful protest,” he corrected, taking a sip of his drink before adding, “And it’s really me who should be buying you a drink. As a thank you.”

“A thank you?” Grantaire repeated. “Whatever for?”

“For what you said at the police station.”

Grantaire waved a dismissive hand. “Oh. That was nothing. You would have come to the same conclusion on your own, especially with Pontmercy showing up when he did. I mean, if you want to thank anyone, thank him.”

Enjolras shook his head and leaned forward. “It  _wasn’t_  nothing,” he insisted. “You — who have told me on multiple occasions that you don’t believe in anything — you were the one to convince me to keep believing. And if you could just dismiss that as nothing…”

There was a strange look on Grantaire’s face, and he shrugged but didn’t say anything. Enjolras sighed. “On a related subject,” he said carefully, “when we were in jail—”

“You can’t really call that  _jail_ ,” Grantaire scoffed. “We were in a holding cell and we weren’t even officially charged.”

Enjolras ground his teeth together and took a deep, calming breath before continuing, “When we were in the  _holding cell_ , you said something. You said everyone was there because they believed in the Cause, not me — with one exception. What was that exception?”

“Myself, of course,” Grantaire said easily.

“Oh.” Enjolras felt himself deflate slightly. “Because you don’t believe in anything?”

Grantaire shook his head, his tone suddenly serious when he said, “No. Because I’m here because I believe in you.”

Enjolras gaped at him for a longer than appropriate amount of time, though to Grantaire’s credit, he didn’t blush or look away, merely raising an eyebrow slightly as he waited for Enjolras to digest that statement. “Oh,” he said again, finally.

“Oh,” Grantaire agreed, pushing away from the bar. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I—”

Whatever excuse he was about to give for slipping away died on his lips when Enjolras surged forward to kiss him. It was a quick kiss, over before either man could really process that it had happened, and all too soon, Enjolras stepped back, flushed pink. It was Grantaire’s turn to say, “Oh”, in a faint voice.

Enjolras resolutely reached out for his glass and drained it, trying to avoid Grantaire’s gaze (trying to avoid deciphering the look on Grantaire’s face). “Right,” he said, feeling lightheaded in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol. “So I should just—”

“Nope,” Grantaire said, grabbing him and kissing him. It was a firmer kiss than before, but somehow also gentle and sweet, and Enjolras found himself moving towards Grantaire to deepen the kiss. It was perhaps a miracle that none of their friends noticed, though they were busy with their own celebrations, and far too soon, Grantaire pulled back, his expression unreadable. “Is this just because I saved the protest?”

“I thought you said that you didn’t save the protest,” Enjolras shot back.

“Fuck, if this is going to be my reward, I will claim  _all_  the credit.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes and kissed Grantaire again. “I promise this is not because you saved the protest.”

Grantaire let out a sigh of relief. “Good, because I’d hate to have to think of you thanking Pontmercy the same way.” Enjolras scowled and shoved Grantaire away, but Grantaire caught his hand, tentatively lacing their fingers together. “Do you, uh, want to get out of here? Go talk or…whatever?”

“Sure,” Enjolras said. “We can take a walk around the block, talk for a bit. Then I’ve got to be back so we can start planning the next protest.” He let Grantaire tug him towards the door, then stopped. “Oh, but Grantaire — you don’t actually think I’m delusional, do you?”

For a moment, he sounded almost as doubtful as he had at the police station, and Grantaire cocked his head, considering him for a long moment. “I think you’re delusional as fuck,” he pronounced, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “But I think that you’re going to convince the world to believe in your delusion, one way or another, and I guess that’s all that matters.”

Enjolras shrugged. “Good enough for the moment. Just don’t think we’re done talking about this.”

Grantaire laughed softly and followed Enjolras outside, squeezing his hand lightly. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”


End file.
